


End of the world

by SharpestRose



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-01
Updated: 2011-07-01
Packaged: 2017-10-20 21:56:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/217480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SharpestRose/pseuds/SharpestRose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dawn, Faith, and Tara, after the end of the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	End of the world

I'm thirty years old today. And that's taking into account that I started counting at zero where most girls count fourteen.

I don't look thirty. Closer to fourteen, even when I'm tired. I guess the monks didn't expect me to live this long, didn't bother programming the aging in right to the Big Glowing Green Energy matrix.

She doesn't look her age, either. That's how I spot her. People don't have kids much nowdays, everyone's getting old fast. The young people you do meet hide out in the lower city, underground. Less radiation down there. Less vampires, too. They don't have to worry about the sun with the dust clouds, and who knew they were claustrophobic? So it's not usual to see someone with a teenage face and lithe body in Sunnydale Above.

I wonder why she came back. Wonder why I never left. I mean, it's not like it's my birthright or calling or any of that junk to stay here. I'm just little Dawnie Summers, with a dead Mommy and a missing sister and a B average in school.

Well, I was, once upon a time. Nobody calls me Dawn anymore. It's an ugly word now, a memory of a time when the sky lightened and the shadows couldn't get you anymore. I go by Anne, when names are necessary. People don't ask for one much.

Faith looks much as she always did. Shorter hair, because long hair in a ridiculous liability. Harder eyes, but who doesn't have that? She must be almost fifty by now. She doesn't look much older than I do.

We're the lost girls, stuck in our neverland hell.

~

Tara's always gonna be my girl.

She was there when all the others were missing, lost, dead, or just plain gone. She came with me to the service for Buffy and respected my choice not to attend the one for my dad. She sang me old songs and told me stories about old gods.

Tara knows a lot about old gods. There's still a bit of Glory in her, more every year as she forgets how to use an electric can opener and remembers the rites to open the world inside a peach stone.

Tara's getting old. Underneath the magic, she's human, and her blood flows and her heart beats and her skin wrinkles in a way Faith and I weren't designed for. We're not meant to last as long as her.

But here we all are.

Faith comes back to the apartment with me. It's not much, but it's still more than most people have. Tara's making the light bulbs change color in patterns, like the old shows they used to put on for deaf people at the community center.

"Hey baby." I say, holding her head between my palms until her eyes focus on me.

"Dawn! I baked bread!" Tara says happily. The bread's got raisins in it. I haven't seen a raisin for years. It tastes like summer sunlight and warm company.

"I heard you died." she says to Faith. She's nothing if not blunt with her speaking. I don't mind so much anymore, but it can confront new people sometimes. Not that we ever meet anyone new anymore. Nothing's new anymore.

"Once or twice." Faith shrugs. "I heard the same about you."

"I'm dying every day." Tara smiles. "But not yet. Not all the way."

"Do you know why we don't age?" I ask, offering some of the raisin bread to Faith. She chews thoughtfully, compliments Tara on her cooking skills, and sits for a while before answering.

"It's our gift. Life. We have to stick around until the world can take care of itself again."

"It's fractured inside. Sometimes I feel the cracks." Tara agrees. "But Dawn says I'm just losing my grip."

She is. I don't say it to be cruel, but I know it hurts her anyway. Tara thinks she's got a deep mystical connection to the energy of the universe but she's just collapsing into her own little world. From the way Faith studies us, I can tell she is too.

Well, good for them. Let them believe their lies if it helps them. Let them dream up their worlds.

I have to live in this one.

 

  



End file.
